When You Feel You’ve Lost Your Way

Feeling Lost

We are born with the need and potential to grow. And while you may not want to hear this, we need to experience adversity and pain to do so.

There are the unforeseen life challenges like trauma, loss, abuse, and illness that can blindside us and put our lives into a tailspin.

Some of us create adversity and crisis in our lives by acting out our pain in the form of addiction or self-destructive behaviors.

The bottom line is this…adversity, crisis, pain: it has the power to consume you and take over your life, but it also has the power to elevate you to a higher state of being. It can light the fire that fuels you to gain self-awareness and become wiser, stronger, and more confident.

Survival Mode

We are hardwired to avoid pain. When we are in distress, or fearful, or uncertain, our brain tells us it’s time to go into survival mode. You may know it as fight or flight. We either prepare for battle or we retreat, surrender to our circumstances, and protect ourselves from the unknown.

So, why do we surrender or retreat?

Self-doubt – We doubt our abilities

Pathology – We’re never taught how to manage our emotions; we were raised by parents or caregivers that lacked these skills, or we inherited the pain and faulty beliefs of our parents

Environment – We live in a society that wants us to believe we’re not enough. We need makeup to be attractive, we need possessions to be valued, we need money to be powerful.

Lack of Self Awareness – When you are weighted down by depression, fear, pain, and the responsibility of being all to everyone; it’s difficult to see your truth

Your Truth

“You are smarter and more powerful than your circumstances.”

There is an intelligent energy that lives in you. Call it spirit, the soul, your connection to the divine. It speaks the truth to you. It whispers to you in the form of dreams and imagination. It comes to you when you sleep or when your heart has been opened by joy or love. And in those moments, you listen.

That longing to be living your dream or the desire to be your ideal self, it wants to pull you in a new direction. But new can be scary. It comes with uncertainty, risks, doubt, and fear of failure or rejection. So often we resist the pull of our dreams because they trigger powerful emotions. And it’s these emotions that keep us stuck.

That feeling of being lost is when you are stuck between your old way of being and your new desired way of being. The feeling of being lost is just your soul/spirit’s way of telling you that you’re holding on to a way of being that no longer serves you. You have outgrown your old self.

To overcome this emotional barrier, I recommend learning from the masters: children. Kids see new experiences as adventures. Long before the new experience has arrived, they have already imagined and experienced it in their minds.

When you think of where you want to be, let your imagination fill you with joy and excitement. Have vivid and detailed mental movies play out in your mind. The goal is to bring your thoughts into alignment with the intelligent energy within you that already knows your truth. This connection to your truth becomes powerful like a magnet and will draw you to the experiences you seek.

You are not lost. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, you’ve had the power to find your way all along.